Our kids love to draw. While any artistic bend did not come from me (definitely from Tiffany), Tirin and Ethan both love all forms, whether it be drawing, coloring, painting, attaching stickers, etc. Their favorite part comes not in the doing, however, but in the giving away their work. A couple of weeks ago, they both woke up on a Saturday ready to break out the markers and crayons. They began in a coloring book, working on pictures for my parents, then Tiff's parents, then Aunt Gale, and so on. We spent a good part of the morning together at the kitchen table, and the kids had a blast. We mailed those to my parents a few days later, and on Friday of last week received a couple of pictures drawn by my dad (a truck for Ethan and a forest for Tirin) and a note from my mom in response. They both enjoyed the pictures, and wanted to sit down and color something else for them and send it right away. Ethan liked his so much that he had to sleep with the picture from "gapa"!

Yesterday we launched into Genesis in Sunday School. "In the beginning, God created..." (Gen. 1:1). It is easy to walk through the day without taking notice of the beauty of God's creation. Flowers. Trees. The sky. The sun. The clouds. And so on. It is also easy to walk through the day, so consumed with our own lives, that we can forget to take time to say an encouraging word, or send a "I caught your child doing something good yesterday" email, or (like my kids and dad) draw a picture for someone and pop it in the mail. After all, they joy should come in the giving. I encourage you to take a least one moment this week to see something you haven't in a while (or ever before), thanking God for the beauty of His creation, and to create something for someone else-Picasso or not (at the least a kind phrase we would not have normally said in our normal course of the day). In so doing, watch how your life and the lives of others will be enriched and driven more to a heart of gratitude towards our Creator, the lover of our souls.